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Month: April 2008

You have to be a child of the 80s to get this one. More like this at Culturegraph, put together by recent G’Day World guest Jeremy Toeman. I’ve been LMAO in the kids’ dentist’s office this morning. Cool dentist. She started by showing off her new Macbook Air and then launched into a discussion with the kids about Age Of Mythology, their favourite game (except maybe HALO) which she also plays.

I’m back this week with my first show from Brisbane!! Today it’s just me talking about TPN’s recent technology woes, my decision not to take venture capital, communism, the origins of the concept of family, an up date on my personal coach, Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week, The Spider And The Starfish, and more!

Holy god damn, what a week. Finally, this morning, TPN is back up (obviously, because I can write this and you can read it). I have to thank Phil Morle from Pollenizer for hooking me up with Jagadeesh from x-minds in India. Jag and his team got TPN back up in amazing time. I wish I’d known about Jagadeesh’s team 10 days ago when I started having problems. I could have saved myself (and TPN’s hosts) a week of grief. Well, they are on my radar now.

And, because I know that THE QUESTIONS THAT I ASK MYSELF DETERMINE MY PERSPECTIVE, I’m thinking up some good questions.

– What could I have done better to avoid this situation?
– How can I make sure we don’t go through that again?
– What made the difference?

The answer to the last one is – Twitter. Phil got involved, and introduced me to Jagadeesh, when I started screaming for help on Twitter. If I didn’t have ~900 people following me on Twitter, I wouldn’t have got that offer of support when I did. Twitter is important, something Misha Cornes obviously misses. If you have a low signal-to-noise ration on your Twitter, then start following better people. She should read my Fast Thinking article.

As he pointed out, weâ€™ve had blogs as a part of our media landscape for at least 5 years, mainstream media are falling over themselves trying to â€˜out 2.0â€² each other, weâ€™ve had podcasts for a few years, weâ€™ve had YouTube for what seems like foreverâ€¦

So how come Australian PR companies still play â€˜hide head in sand and pretend it will all go awayâ€™ games?

It isn’t just PR – it’s Australian corporates in general. By the way, if you want to check out the work I’ve been doing for Telstra recently, visit their new Enterprise site. It contains podcast interviews I’ve done for them with some of their top executives, chatting about what they do in Telstra and what it’s like to work for for The Big T in 2008. The interviews aren’t scripted and don’t get subjected to much editing by Telstra PR. It’s just a real conversation between me, a member of the public, and a Telstra exec. It’s the closest thing so far I’ve seen in Australia where I large corporation is using Web2.0 to be more conversational.

I’ve had a HELL of a week. The day I was leaving Melbourne I discovered TPN was having major technical issues and it’s just been one thing after another this week. Database errors, sites hacked, you name it. And as TPN is still between proper IT support, it’s KILLING me. I’ve been trying to sign a deal with a Melbourne-based IT company since the beginning of December and it’s just dragging on and on and on.

And TPG are dicking around with the setup of my broadband here. I filled out their online order form on Monday morning this week and today they tell me it’ll be 3 – 5 working days…. from today. So that’s the end of next week.

What made me laugh most was on Monday when the guy from Telstra had to come to my house… TO MY HOUSE… WHERE MY WIFE SLEEPS… WHERE MY CHILDREN PLAY WITH THEIR TOYS… TO MY HOUSE…. (a little Godfather Part Two reference there, couldn’t resist)… to connect my phone line. I watched as this guy knelt down in front of my house, opened up a manhole, and TWISTED TWO WIRES TOGETHER. It’s 2008! WHAT THE HELL?!? I asked him “why do you have to come all the way here to connect my phone, can’t they just push a button on a computer somewhere?”

He replied “well they do that but someone needs to make the physical connection.”

“But”, I asked, perplexed, “the last tenants had a phone with Telstra, can’t you just say “oh ok now THIS person has the phone at that address?”

Apparently not. What the HELL Telstra? This is the level of sophistication of your network in 2008? A guy twisting two wires together? We’re all screwed.

Ah well. Here’s a link to an article I wrote months ago (that’s my excuse if it’s woefully out of date) which has just been printed on some dead trees for Fast Thinking magazine. Hope you like it. WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SOME BITCHIN’ ALLITERATION AND REFERENCES TO SUPERMAN.